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Nobel laureate game theorist Nash finds India hard to fathom By Deepshikha Ghosh, Indo-Asian News Service New Delhi, Jan 10 (IANS) He can reduce complex human relationships or military codes into decipherable mathematical equations but is clearly stumped by a "complicated" India. Meet John F. Nash Jr -- Nobel laureate, mathematical genius and recovering paranoid schizophrenic. "There are so many things here, it is hard to describe ...... India is very complicated," grins the 74-year-old, who inspired the Oscar-winning "A Beautiful Mind" on his strange and wonderful life. Nash blazed the world of mathematics with his dissertation on "Non-Cooperative Games," written in 1950 at age 21, which won him the 1994 Nobel Prize in Economics. But at the peak of his career, in 1958, he lapsed into schizophrenia and lost his job at the Massachusetts Institute of technology. When the Nobel Prize committee began debating a prize for the game theory, Nash's name was dismissed - due to his mental state. On his disease, Nash himself argued that if a cure meant he could no longer do any original work, then it was probably not worthwhile. Eventually, he shared the Nobel prize with John C. Harsanyi and Reinhard Selten for what he felt was his "most trivial work", the 27-page "Nash equilibrium". Here to participate in a game theory conference along with other mathematicians and economists, Nash seems rather lost in thought as he faced the media at the IBM India Research Lab in the Indian Institute of Technology, Delhi. "Cogito Ergo Sum (I think, therefore I am -- Descarte) " he reminded the gathering, as he recalled his youth when companies encouraged staff to "THINK" in bold letters. Fellow mathematician Lloyd S. Shapley, who was also present in the interaction, asked whether computers thought. Responded Nash:"We define it to be not thinking, but do ants think? They have brains. You know, we know less about ants than computers...." The voice drops to a mumble, and Nash withdraws into his inner space. The 2002 film "A Beautiful Mind" brought his story to millions of households across the globe. Was he happy with the film and its portrayal of his life? "Well - a movie has its good and bad sides. The good thing is when you get money - we have to be happy about that." It was an oblique hint at his dissatisfaction with the film, which he thinks was not entirely accurate. Nash was often known as the "Phantom of Fine Hall," when he returned in the 1970s after his illness. Students and others at Princeton describe him as a "ghostly figure shuffling around the corridors of the math and physics building, occasionally writing numerology treatises on the blackboards". In the grips of his disease, he was forced out of the circuit for two decades until he returned to Princeton to quietly return to his work. Nash associated his madness with his living on an "ultra logical" plane -- "breathing air too rare" for the average human being. The game theory emanates from the study of games such as chess or poker in which players have to think ahead - devise a strategy based on expected countermoves from the other player. Such strategic interaction also characterizes many economic situations. Nash introduced the distinction between cooperative games, in which binding agreements can be made, and non-cooperative games, where binding agreements were not feasible. He developed an equilibrium concept for non-cooperative games that later came to be called Nash equilibrium. Asked if the game theory could be applied on an individual level, in human relationships, Nash told reporters: "You might try to conduct human relationships on the game theory, but you might make a mistake. "It is better if you behave instinctively or according to cultural mores." --Indo-Asian News Service
